CHAPTER 1

"'Somewhere East of Suez'? What the hell kind of name is that for a planet?" The ticket seller cocked her head, roused (for the moment) from her boredom. She looked the traveler over from behind the remote spaceport's counter, where people paid for passage when they didn't have access to the Empire's credit transfer system. Or when they didn't want to leave tracks.

"It's kind of a name an ex-soldier would give it, when he'd found a place to settle down and make a home for his family. That particular ex-soldier was one of my great-grandfathers." The traveler shook her silvering brown head, and smiled faintly. Distractedly, as if her mind had already rushed out across the light years and reached the world of her birth. She wouldn't say it was "at home" there, though. Not for half of her lifetime had Christabel thought about Somewhere East of Suez in those terms.

"Oh. I see." The seller went back to being bored.

"Not many people read the ancient Terran poet Kipling these days. The line's actually 'somewheres east of Suez,' because it's written in dialect. It means a place where society's rules don't apply." The traveler leaned across the counter to look at the monitor for herself. "So from here can I make a straight shot? Great! Thank you."